Ask Michele Anything: 5 Lessons of Unburdened

Navigating the labyrinth of personal finance — the budgets, the investments, the debts — can often make it hard to connect with the human experiences behind all the numbers.

And that’s exactly what makes EarnIn’s new 3-part series, Unburdened, so valuable to anyone like me who thinks we could all be talking more about how our finances affect our lives.

This conversation between four EarnIn customers and personal finance expert, Tonya Rapley, shows what happens when we do just that. More common ground, less stigma, and more solutions. Something we all deserve.

As a Finance Therapist with over three decades of experience helping people through many of the subjects at the center of the series — debt, inherited financial habits, finances in relationships — I wanted to dig deeper into the experiences Cedric, Christina, Cody, and Nina shared on the show.

Through a therapeutic lens, this article serves as companion pieces to Unburdened, helping you connect more deeply to its lessons.

Off the bat, I could see debt acting as a mirror in the lives of everyone in the series, reflecting deep memories, fears, traumas, and in many ways, healing. Watching them wade into the subject, we can see how guarded everyone is at first — which is to be expected in a studio full of cameras — but also how eager they are to overcome that trepidation by sharing their stories.

Our ancestors leaned on storytelling to survive and thrive. The family stories on Unburdened, starting with Christina’s low-income upbringing in San Diego, immediately help us understand the anxiety around debt as an impulse to avoid feelings of need, instability, and danger that date back to childhood.

Our aversion to debt is also deeply rooted in evolution and our primal instincts to survive. Debt represents a threat to our well-being, triggering fight or flight responses nearly identical to facing a physical danger. We may as well be facing prehistoric lions as we tread water in a lake infested with alligators, though in reality, it’s merely a mounting credit card bill.

When Cody describes debt as a wave pushing him down, that sense of drowning speaks to the overwhelming, relentless quality of debt, which can trigger panic, aggression, negligence, or all of the above. But talking through these experiences immediately takes the pressure off the trigger, settling our nerves in a safer, more connected reality. It’s beautiful to watch that happen in real-time as everyone speaks in Episode 1 and serves as a lesson for all of us. When in doubt, talking helps. And by the end of the series, we see the relief it can bring in just one day.

Beyond neurological triggers, debt also taps into learned cultural triggers that go way beyond our relationships with friends and family. Our ancestors saw debt, be it monetary or a lack of enough food or shelter that lowered our likelihood to survive, as a source of social ostracism. When Nina talks about the difficulty of sharing her debt with her aunts for fear of being seen as needy, we see a similar fear of losing social standing over personal matters.

Today, our survival is rarely on the line, but there’s a reason it can feel like it is simply by labeling ourselves “unsuccessful.” Remember that success is completely relative — you decide what it means — and your survival and worth are not on the line. These can be powerful grounding thoughts that snap us out of fears rooted in people pleasing. You’re safe, and you’re worth far more than your debt.

Our parents deeply impact how we navigate the world, but the ways they shape our financial outlooks can be more subtle. I loved the way Tonya started the series by recognizing our relationship with debt didn’t begin with our first credit card. It started as children watching our parents handle money. Cedric’s experience of seeing his parents overspend and underplan showed his wisdom in understanding the origins of his own approach to money.

Behind our spending habits are desires for love, validation, and influence, none of which have much to do with our financial health. Recognizing those learned patterns is such a valuable first step in asserting our own standards and goals beyond what our parents showed us.

One of the most significant decisions anyone makes in life is whether to pursue education at the cost of more debt or stay the course without going back to school. Watching Christina weigh this difficult question was heartwrenching, in part because there’s no easy answer. Pursuing education as an adult can mean less time for a second job or childcare. But it can also unlock new levels of success that ripple through a family far further than the debt it creates. The trick is predicting how much impact going back to school will have on your earning potential (and mental well-being) in the long run.

No one can make that decision for you, but I will say this: the main person you have to satisfy is yourself. Pursuing a degree out of a sense of social standing or family pressure with no direct plan for how you’ll put it to use is a common recipe for disappointment (along with the extra debt). But if you’re passionate about the subject and have a clear vision for where studying it will take you, it’s hard to put a price on that. Take your time, get confident about where you want to go, then explore all your options to get there. If you know where you’re heading, there’s really no stopping you.

I finished Unburdened feeling so excited for where Christina and everyone else on the show would go next because their visions for their futures were getting clearer and clearer.

Money is an intimate subject and sharing your struggles with it can be incredibly vulnerable. But it’s also liberating, clarifying, and empowering. As the series shows, breaking the silence around debt can lead you to great advice, more belonging, and the encouragement you need to reach new heights. Discovering you’re not alone is a powerful thing. And if you had any doubt: you’re not.

Watch Unburdened now.